My final post to this blog is a reflection on road trips, travel, and “American experience.” I haven’t included much about myself in these posts, but I am very interested in travel in tourism. I am hoping to do an Independently Design Major that focuses around studying tourism. I like thinking about which advertisements for …
Continue reading “Tourism and Writing on a Drive West: Post-Nabokov Reflection”
Well, the course “Topics in Literature: Vladimir Nabokov” has now ended. By the numbers, we sampled a chunk of his work: 1 poem, 1 essay, 1 novel-length autobiography, 6 novels, and 15 short stories (not forgetting the Stanley Kubrick film!). As a brief closing statement for the course, I found this line quite fitting: “so …
Continue reading “End-of-the-block Reflection: Institutions and the Sun-Bathing Professor”
The majority of our third week was spent reading and discussing Nabokov’s infamous best-seller Lolita. For those not familiar with this work, it depicts hilariously-named Humbert Humbert and the gross, evil, and maliciously sexual relationship that he seeks out with Lolita. Lolita is just twelve years at the start of the novel, and fifteen by the end …
My tardy Week 2 post (it’s now Week 3 on the Block Plan) for the Nabokov course reflects on nature. Nabokov frequently uses imagery from nature and the natural world in his writing. I mentioned that Nabokov was fascinated by butterflies throughout his entire life. As a child, he would spend time outdoors with his …
Hi, My name is Ryan and I will be blogging for the Block 6 class titled “Topics in Comparative Literature: Vladimir Nabokov”. This class will be focusing on the writings Vladimir Nabokov, the author most notoriously known for writing Lolita. We spent the majority of our first week reading and reflecting on Nabokov’s autobiography Speak, …
The past two and a half weeks have been filled with various Chicago explorations but the nature of the block plan is bringing me back to reality. The pace of the class is definitely quickening as we wrap up third week. All twelve of us spent most of today in the Newberry Library. While Lena …
In the past two weeks, my classmates and I have wandered through various parts of Chicago. From Uptown to the UChicago campus, we’ve passed walls of murals, popped our heads into random music venues, people-watched at Lincoln and Millennium park, and eaten nearly everything in sight. Nevertheless, visiting the Chicago History Museum illuminated many aspects …
Hello there! I am reporting from Chicago, IL. Eleven other students and myself are taking “The City vs. the Country: Literature of Nature and Urban Spaces” with Professor Bill Davis. A huge part of the class is exploring Chicago independently, so I thought I would delve into the different ways of wandering the city. Subway …
Happy block break everyone! I definitely meant to write this post either last night or this morning, but found that I needed to give myself a little bit of a break before writing this! Although our final paper for this class was fairly short (especially since my last block ended with me writing my thesis), …
Now that we’ve reached the end of week 3, almost all of the reading is done (we have one last book to read this weekend), which seems kind of crazy to me! After spending several years on the block plan, you would think that I’d be used to how quickly blocks come to an end, …
